Lizard Backlash
by Winkaku
Summary: Unexpected side effects of bonding with lizard spirits may include the following...


(A/N: this idea came to me while I was rearranging my collection of shed snake-skins in my room. A friend of mine raises snakes and he gives me the skins sometimes, the largest one I've got is about 5-7 feet.

Later that night I was sitting in the tub playing Metroid Fusion when I noticed that once again my sister had deemed it a good idea to throw away used pads in the bathroom trashcan and it hit me like a ton of rectangular building things.

Did you know that certain evidence suggests that some spiecies of reptiles had feathers?)

It had been nearly a day since Ryu and his spirit ally, Tokagero, the bandit lord of 600 years past had been gone.

Anna had sent them in search of a rare sushi ingredient that Ryu had refused to cook without, he had been fiercely protective of his claims that the rice rolls would not hold proper taste without it and so he had set off into the night to get the needed herbs and spices.

Leaving his bike behind and taking the miles long journey by foot, in the middle of the summers heat, to his preferred shop, he had taken the trying environments as a challenge.

The onsen, with only Yoh and manta to cook, had to rely on Ryu's old recipes as the customers, along with Anna, lamented the loss of their best and favorite chef.

However on the night of their return, at the odd hour of midnight, they were met with two estranged stares. It was late and even the chirping insects seemed ready to go to bed for the night. Yoh sat comfortably in the main lounge with Anna as he polished his spirit friends memorial stone, doing so always seemed to feel right to him; it was an inexplicable habit that no one had felt the need to curb. As the clock struck it's final chord, indicating the hour of midnight, the main door opened and in walked Ryu, looking for all his worth as someone desperately avoiding to be seen, his spirit sniggering silently in the background.

"Oh…my god, are you um….okay?"

Yoh took a long look at the chef, he seemed older and more run down than he had ever looked before.

His proud pompadour was limp and in tatters and his skin had taken a dull dirty tanned color like the flesh of a dried desert carcass but by far the worst of all was his eyes.

The once vibrant onyx and chocolate brew had become a listless black soup and the entirety of his eyes had taken a dusky pale and sickly blue semi opaque sheen. His lips seemed to have taken on a gummed up look, as if the skin would fuse together if he left his mouth closed to long.

"You look like you've been out in the desert for weeks…maybe we should call Faust."

Yoh moved over to him, setting down his sleeping spirits now polished memorial tablet and stared at Ryu, poking at the dry and stretched skin with disgust, as if the scale like substance was infectious.

Ryu just gave a low-spirited humph and, hands in his pockets, turned on his sore toes, grimacing, toward his bedroom, preferring to let his spirit explain. Tokagero gave him an agitated and put upon look as he grumbled under his non-existent breath at Ryu's retreating form. He turned to look at his two bosses anyway; Yoh the curious and Anna the ice mistress.

"…Don't bother."

Shrugging, he didn't look happy or sad but he didn't look angry either, he had the air about him of someone trying very hard not to reveal a friends' most embarrassing secret as he turned to follow his shamanic chef friend, hair quivering like agitated snakes and his ghostly tail swishing back and forth like a secretly amused feline. The thief seemed as if to be caught between budding empathy and a bubbling snicker for the others misfortune, Yoh had no doubt that if it were someone else in his condition, the spirit would have had no mercy for them.

"That was…weird."

As morning came and the onsen began to awaken, Amidamaru, the ever vigilant samurai slinked out of his shiny ebony hued memorial stone and set about his daily rounds as spiritual guardian of the onsen. The old samurai spirit took it as a kind of a prideful obligation and no one had mind to object it, though he did give a customer quite a start once when he stuck his head through the wall into the dining room, but in his defense, how was he supposed to know they could see ghosts too?

Floating on down into the lounge halls he met up with his long time friend Manta, free from his books for once and enjoying a cup of coffee with the morning wallstreet journal. Manta's eyes trailed over to him as he folded up the paper and set down his steaming mug.

"Good morning there Amidamaru, um have you seen Ryu? It's almost time for breakfast."

"No, I have not, I will look for him."

With a nod he thoughtfully drifted back up and to the left, passing the scraggly and dried out bonsai that never got enough light and coming face to face with the tightly shut door that lead to Ryu's dormitory.

He hummed quietly to himself as he stared at the hastily hung "do not disturb" sign dangling from the doorknob, conflicted at first on weather or not to enter but he soon disregarded it none the less.

It was like the first time Amidamaru had ever seen a zombie horror movie, seated above his master in the empty theater, wide eyed and chewing on his shirt. The room was silent save for a smothered rustling and seemed more like a demons den then a bedroom, it's aura a frustrated swirl. It was dark and quiet, the air seemed as if all of its latent moisture had been sucked out as a dark skinned and clawed hand with long lizard like fingers pulled delicately on the hanging lamp pull between two thin cracked claws to turn on the lights. And just like movie magic when the hero first laid eyes on the cinematic monstrosity he had to fight, Amidamaru screamed loud and clear.

At the sound of his scream, every shaman in the onsen came running and three guests shivered, Yoh, whose office was just around the corner, had been the first to reach his ailing spirit. Tokagero had jumped onto Amidamaru in brash fury, just as the samurai had prepared to strike down the abomination that had most certainly devoured Ryu. The two spirits fought it out as they yelled and screamed and the bandits' curses flung about.

"You idiot! Don't you know how to read!"

Yoh, eyebrow twitching in annoyance for having his early morning office nap interrupted, launched forward and struck them both atop the head as Anna walked through the open door in her scarlet robes and turned on the main light switch by the door, the two spirits recoiling from the blow.

"Lord Yoh please be wary, it is some form of demon! A basilisk serpent from hell!"

His exaggerated form shook with barely held anticipation as he pointed at the offending lump under the covers. The old thief barked out a displeased laugh and smacked the samurai upside the head.

"Hey!"

"That is no monster nor any demon; now get out of here!"

Rubbing the back of his head Yoh walked up to Ryu's bed under Anna's severe scrutinizing gaze, towards the quivering mass of piled covers and pillows. Pulling the duvet away to reveal the culprit of this morning chaos with one quick swipe, he too screamed.

There in plane sight was Ryu, form bent over and agitated, his skin even worse than before as he scratched and tore at it.

Large emerald green patches of scales had developed over his body, small dark green slats of tough leather like armor that formed around his face and arms and legs, not nearly covering his whole body yet still quite noticeable. Pale golden hued plates of scales just as scattered as the smaller green ones had developed along his belly, both types smoothing out to blend back into his ragged desert skin. His hair was a spiny mess of black feather like strands and the claws on his hands seemed as if they would fall off if they were hit too hard. He looked like a revived fossil, the pale opaque sheen of his eyes peeling back with the skin to reveal a luxurious cacophony dark chocolate.

"Okay, I am definitely calling Faust down here!"

Tokagero frowned as he put his palm to his face and floated down to seat himself on the floor, grumbling obscenities under a wide smirk as Ryu put one clawed and scaly hand to his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose between barely fixed claws.

"He's more a lizard than we thought."

Anna, in all of her seemingly monotone glory, chose that moment to clear the air and whack her husband on the back for screaming. Ryu began to speak soon after, the parched leathery skin of his lips making it difficult to keep them separate and the dried out lizard like appearance almost macabre as he scratched furiously at his flaking side.

"Ever since I partnered up with Tokagero, every month I shed my skin like a lizard. It gets rid of old stuff but it… well it's not too pretty." Ryu scratched absently at his scalp, his hair shedding the feather like appearance in patches of scaly dandruff.

To prove his point, much to Yoh's abhorrence, the bandit ghost swaggered up to Ryu and pulled off a large segment of old skin from his face, peeling it off with ease to reveal the beautiful moon pale peach underneath the desert dry and taking the dull green reptilian scales with it. The blue opaque of his eyes came off with the thin leather strip as well, as if his eyes had grown a transparent skin over them, with a disturbing effect. Ryu swatted his hands away, agitated and itchy, his right eye peeled only halfway clean, half his pupil a dull mud and the other a rich hazel coffee blend.

Dropping the disgusting piece of scaly tattered skin, it crumbled into nothingness and disappeared before it even touched the floor as the thief then wafted back and took a seat on the edge of the bed to stare down the unwanted guests. Still scratching, he cursed obscenely as his last claw fell off and was left with only human nails to ease his suffering.

With a grunt and an aggravated harrumph, Ryu stood up from his bed and shoved his body violently against the wall, grinding his left side into the splinters and catches, scratching at the offending itchy skin with long clawless fingers and peeling it off against the wall which looked almost as if this had happened once too often for it's health.

"I was wondering why your left wall always looked scraped." Said Anna as she turned to leave the other two to their incredulous stares.

Ryu, still rubbing up against the wall, turned to give them a fearsome glare, which didn't work very well with half his body smeared against the wall and the whole left side of him remarkably better looking than the other. Stifling a stunned and unexpected giggle, Yoh turned to leave the two alone and took his samurai spirit, still staring oddly ahead, grasping his arm as he pulled Amidamaru through the doorway.

The belligerent thief, anger forgotten, burst out laughing at his shamans misfortunes while the other tried desperately to quell the fiery itching.

"Ha, you are like a proud cockerel in molt, losing all his feathers!"

The bandit rolled onto one non-corporeal side, laughing for all he was worth as the shadow of the onsen bookkeeper and financial accountant, Manta, walked in through the open door.

To the old thief, the look on his face was as priceless as his scream.


End file.
